


Should’ve Run

by wiltedcyclamen



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Drabble, Light Angst, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedcyclamen/pseuds/wiltedcyclamen
Summary: “Shots flew past where he stood, the ghost of his stance riddled with bullet holes.”A short drabble of Arthur and his struggles.
Kudos: 13





	Should’ve Run

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-upload; I made small edits and had deleted it before, but I decided to put it back up.

The blood was warm and sticky. It smeared light red and orange across the hairs on his arm, and the smell was awful. 

The horse was still on the ground, the knife wound still bleeding where she was put out of her misery. 

“‘M sorry, girl,” were the last words the horse ever heard. 

* * *

The cliffside was rigid and far above the ground, striking against the sky, and he was scared. Not that he would admit that. He had nowhere to turn except forward to get shot, or behind to the raging waters below. Only one gave him the option to live, and he jumped. 

Shots flew past where he stood, the ghost of his stance riddled with bullet holes.

The water was frigid and paralyzing. It was further up in the mountains in the bitter morning of the day, and the law had somehow found his makeshift camp just in front of a cliff near the Dakota River. 

Adrenaline and fear pumped through his veins as his arms flailed to reach the surface, his face craving to touch the open air. His lungs burned and felt tight against his chest. The water was relentless and thrashed him around until the only thing he could breathe in was water and the mist that flew off of it.

The land greeted him with open arms. His body heaved onto the ground as he coughed up water and took in strangled gasps for fresh air. Death receded into the corner of his mind and his soul as he choked on the air around him. 

Not today.

* * *

The bullet pierced his skin and fresh blood blossomed through his shirt like a newborn flower in the spring. He grunted through the pain and made sure the bastard paid for what he did to his shoulder. Cattleman raised, he shot once into the broad man in front of him. His head snapped back as it embedded in the middle of his forehead, dead. 

Arthur glanced down at the wound he now branded, crimson leaking and dripping from it. Everyone around him was dead, killed by his own hand, and this is what he deserved, he thought. 

He got back to camp and had it treated with fretting hands, bullets meeting skin not being a very new thing around here, especially to him. He’d had so many close calls that he couldn’t count those times on his fingers anymore.

He chopped wood for the fire, and his shoulder gave a dull ache of protest. He should’ve rested it more, but he had no heart in it to care. He had to pull his weight or he would be useless to the family around him. Jobs called his name from every corner like the Grim Reaper calling his name from the depths of Hell. Any job could lead to his end, but he did them anyway, with the protests of his past lover and his survival instincts and his common sense - and practically everything but himself and his family - screaming at him. 

He should’ve run when he had the chance.

* * *


End file.
